I’m always looking for free resources online, and I especially like finding historical newspapers. More and more states have newspaper projects, and the West has some pretty good coverage.
Newspapers are an excellent record group for Western States researchers since they existed in many places before official vital records, statehood, or censuses. There are many individual digitization projects in this region, so you are bound to have some luck Googling “digital newspapers in (city, county, state)”, but I wanted to compile a list of major statewide resources.
The Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website hosts many of these statewide newspaper projects through their National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), so some of these links will take you to a state’s own project through their state library or archive, and some will take you to the NDNP link. It’s best to check both links, as there may or may not be overlap in the online collections. Here are links to the projects:
Arizona Digital Newspaper Project and Arizona NDNP
Alaska Newspaper Project – Appears to only have microfilmed newspapers, and not to have digitized them yet, but you might obtain them from ILL
California Digital Newspaper Collection and California NDNP
Colorado Historic Newspaper Collection and Colorado NDNP
Hawaii Digital Newspaper Program and Hawaii NDNP
Montana Newspapers and Montana NDNP
New Mexico Digital Newspapers and New Mexico NDNP
Oregon Historic Newspapers and Oregon NDNP
Utah Digital Newspapers and Utah NDNP
On Granny's Trail 
2 thoughts on “Free Digital Newspaper Projects Out West”